Wasting hours now? I think as we age we do that less and less. We might look forward to a vacation or a visit from our grandchildren, but often each hour of the day preceding those events is full, and so anticipation takes a back seat. We need the time BEFORE the trip or the visit to accomplish something. Maybe packing, maybe preparing meals, maybe purchasing things for these events. These examples are general, but you get the idea. Because if you are a writer or an artist, a gardener or a photographer, an entrepreneur or working in a profession, or just hanging our with your children and grandchildren–your days are full. Why?

Busyness Provides Distraction ETC

We might feel better about ourselves if we pack our days with busyness so we are totally tired when the day ends.

We might need to blot out the idea of passing time and so filling up the calendar gives us a false sense of an endless future.

We might need to feel needed and so lining up experiences (and they are often thoughtful and wonderful ones) keeps us involved with people and provides that salve to neediness.

Or possibly as we age, it might take us longer to accomplish tasks and so we are losing time trying to maintain everything we did in our thirties and forties.

Are Too Many Things Claiming Your Attention?

In a recent article, Arianna Huffington wrote about the “life audit” she created in her forties. She made a list of everything she still wanted to accomplish: on the list–learning to speak German, becoming a good skier and learning to cook. In the end, her life was already so full that the thought of adding these things to her to-do list felt like baggage. She finally eliminated all of them and felt much better as they no longer claimed her attention.

Time Famine Versus Time Affluence

Leslie Perlow from Harvard Business School refers to the rushed and frenzied “I’ve got no time” feeling as time famine. When you feel relaxed because you have surplus time, that’s “time affluence.” Living in the present moment can help you achieve the latter. It’s not dissimilar to Chopra stating that:an ageless body depends on a timeless mind. What is timeless in you? Your soul, your consciousness, your mind freed from memory during meditation? Yes! Free yourself. Your immortality is that timeless part of you that you’ll find through meditation.

Achieving Time Affluence

But even if meditation isn’t for you, the old adage of stopping and smelling the roses just might work. It slows things down, changes the perception of time rushing by and leaving you behind. BECAUSE YOU ARE NOT BEHIND. You are in the forefront of your life: smelling the roses, reading a great book, watching an amazing film, listening to your favorite music, taking a walk. Every moment you indulge in something that calms your heart rate and eases tension is adding hours to your life. That’s true time affluence.

A Revolutionary Way To Look At Time

Maybe the viewpoint of physicist Paul Davies will help: “Physicists prefer to think of time as laid out in its entirety–a timescape, analogous to a landscape–with all past and future events located there together. It is a notion sometimes referred to as block time.” Viewing this block time is like looking at the ocean or your favorite beach or meadow–your life is spread out before you–certainly not receding behind you. Claim life and time and enjoy, because how you perceive time has got so much to do with it.

DO YOU HAVE ANY THOUGHTS ON HOW TO MAKE TIME WORK FOR YOU? please share.

6 thoughts on “What’s Time Got To Do With It?”

As I walk the Siesta Key Beach this morning
I defined it is “timeless”
Looks feels smells the same as 50 years ago
When I first walked this beach with my family
The return of my family in spirit brought the beauty of good memories to comfort me in present time